We love smoothies at our house! My little guy is just crazy about them, and they make a great snack or meal replacement – especially in the summer when it is so hot. We like nice creamy smoothies, so I use skim or 1% milk, and of course I put some yogurt in to add a little more pizzazz. We use a wide variety of fruits in our smoothies, whatever we have on hand actually. In the past we have used pears, kiwi, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, banana, cherries, cantalope, peaches, and nectarines – not all at the same time though!

We also add honey as a natural sweetener, cinnamon and sometimes vanilla extract for flavor, and fiber powder and protein powder for extra nutrition. At my house we like thin smoothies that are easy to drink from a glass, but on occasion we want something thicker, so we use frozen fruit and add ice to make it more of a milkshake consistency.

Here is one of my favorite smoothie recipes:

1 banana, broken into pieces

1/2 – 1 cup dark sweet pitted cherries, frozen

2 large spoonfuls of non fat vanilla yogurt

1/2 scoop vanilla whey protein powder

1/2 scoop flavorless fiber powder

1 squirt honey

ground cinnamon to taste

milk to taste

I mix all ingredients in a tall glass – filling the rest of the glass with the millk – and use an immersion blender to blend in the glass (I avoid dirtying extra dishes whenever possible – I hate washing dishes!). You can of course increase, decrease, or alter any of the ingredients as desired. Sometimes I only have plain yogurt on hand, so I add a little vanilla extract to make up for it.

We eat tons of fruit at my house already, but if you have picky eaters who don’t like fruit this can be a good way to sneak it in. It can also be a good way to hide yogurt if your kids don’t like it (although I’ve only ever met one child who didn’t like yogurt). This recipe is super healthy and very low fat, and adding the protein and fiber powders makes it more filling – we often use it as breakfast. I hope this inspires you to make smoothies at your house! Enjoy!